Brenda's Story: How I Stopped Fighting the Addiction and Started Reaching My Son

That was the scariest part of all of it, was like, I got a glimpse of, this is where he's headed. Really hit me at that point. The way he looked, the way he smelled, things were just unraveling really quickly. But after that, I said to my ex, we are out of our parenting skill set.

Brenda's story is every mother's worst nightmare. Her son Enzo would disappear for days, Leaving her in a constant state of fear and helplessness. Then came the call that no parent ever wants to get. Enzo had overdosed, and the doctors didn't think he was going to survive. In this episode, Brenda shares her raw and emotional perspective on what it's like to live through the chaos of addiction and of the heartbreak of watching her son fight for his life. Her story is one of pain, resilience, and ultimately hope. You won't want to miss this powerful glimpse into a mother's journey and how her family got to the other side. If you haven't seen part 1, that's okay. You can go ahead and watch this one. Hey, Brenda, thank you so much for joining us and for being willing to tell us your side of the story.

You are so welcome. Thanks for inviting me.

So I think a good place to start is just to get to know you as a person.

Absolutely. Well, I grew up in Seattle, just a little suburb north of Seattle, and had— I kind of say I hit the jackpot with my family. Very loving, present. You know, like, I don't have any big terrible memories or anything. My parents were both professors, and so they had a lot of the summer off. So we would go sailing on our sailboat for 3 weeks every summer, just sort of go, and we would figure out our itinerary as we went. Just so— it was really so amazing, you know? And I don't think I appreciated it at the time because I didn't have any perspective on, you know, on that.

Yeah.

So it was great. And then I went to college. And then you went to college. down in Southern California, got out of Washington for a little bit, went to just a small private Christian school, and then worked in the Bay Area for 3 years, and then got married and moved back to Seattle when I was 24. So fairly uneventful. Like, it was smooth sailing. Yeah. And I, again, I probably didn't appreciate it as much as I should have, for sure. But, you know, I didn't have family that passed away or, you know, some of the things that some of my friends were having happen. to them. And so I counted myself as being very lucky and married my college sweetheart and, you know, just sort of kept rolling on with life.

Enzo, your son, described you as a boss in every way.

That's funny.

I could see he meant it when he said it. He said, she is just a boss.

That's funny.

Yeah. Would you agree with that? Does that sound right to you?

I think I would now, only because I've been pressure tested a little bit, you know, by life. I was literally a boss. Like, I had people that worked for me. And so I did, you know, I did that thing in the corporate world and really enjoyed work. Like, I— and I still do work way too much— loved work. I loved advertising and marketing. I liked kind of trying to get in the heads of people, like, why would somebody buy this product? Or whatever it was. And so, and my kids, Enzo and his brother, would always say, oh, Mama's going to work, because I wore high heels every day. And I would come clomp, clomp, clomping down the hallway, you know, with my high heels on, ready to go to work. And so they kind of always knew that that was, you know, that was going on. And so, yeah, now I've just had to really, like, face things head on as you do when life gets really challenging. So I don't know if I would choose that word boss, but I think it's cute coming from my son.

How old were you when, when Enzo came along? Because he's the oldest, right? Because you said he's the younger brother. Yeah.

Yes, he's the oldest. I had him when I was 28, 28 or 29. You know, when that's your first, You don't have any perspective. But I did know that I had— my sister also lived in Seattle, and she also had just had a son. We had them 4 years in a row. So we have 29, 28, 27, and 26-year-old boys, my sister and I, which was super fun growing up. But I did know that Enzo was a little more difficult than what I was kind of gathering that my friends and my sister's kids were. But he had a prolapsed cord during his birth. And so it was a horrible emergency birth. It was like a scene out of ER. You know, one minute everything is going just fine. My doctor's laughing at me because he's like, you came into my office all 9 months in your high heels and your, you know, cute outfits, and everything is going perfectly. And I had arrived at the hospital and I was already 7 centimeters dilated. So they said, oh, don't even worry about, you know, anesthesia because You're gonna have this kid and you're gonna be outta here before you even know it. So I didn't have anything, not an aspirin, not anything. And so a prolapsed cord is when their cord comes out before the baby, which means it gets compressed between their head and your pelvic bone. So he was out of oxygen for about 4 minutes. And so it just turned into this horrible emergency scene and they basically just had to cut him out of me, which was unfortunate that I didn't have any painkillers. At the time. So it was a very, very difficult birth. And his first Apgar was a 2, which is the score that they give, you know, they do all the little tests. And so that was not good. We didn't hear the cry that you want to hear when you have a baby. So it was really, really challenging. You know, we just— you just don't know what you're doing as a parent anyway. And then to have a really horribly traumatic birth. And then I was basically incapacitated for the first month. I couldn't walk. I was, like, crawling from the couch to the bathroom. And so— but anyway, that was— yeah, that's how he arrived into the world.

And so when he was a kid, like, in elementary school, what was he like as a kid?

You know, just incredibly bright, incredibly talented at things that he would try. And also Very challenging. Like, homework was always a challenge. Just, he would be crying, I would be crying because he always knew the answers, but he couldn't figure out or explain how he had gotten there. And you know how, like, they started teaching this new math when it was getting to the point where it was like, something is just not right. And his teachers were saying, we think that you should have him tested for ADHD. And so we did that in 3rd grade. And he was diagnosed with ADHD, and that was really challenging because he did not like the medications. You know, we tried all of that—different medications, different doses. Then, you know, he couldn't sleep and he couldn't eat, and he was already kind of on the smaller side than some of his friends. So then he was losing weight, and it was so hard to know what to do. And you know, that was really before I think there was a lot more knowledge about ADHD. There were still people in the camp of that's not real. So I knew. I knew it was real because I was seeing the contrast of what that was. So it was a real struggle to get him through school, and I kind of did get him through school. I was the mom who was like, if you can't get your homework done, I will jump in and do it. Or, you know, I just overcompensated because it was so painful to watch him struggle, you know. In class, he was very social. If he didn't want to do something, he absolutely would not do it. But he would talk and socialize. He was always, you know, the ringleader of the friends, you know, not so much a troublemaker in class, just really active. When we did try the medication for a couple months, all of a sudden the teachers were sending notes home like, oh, Enzo sits and he's quiet in class. He's not always getting up and disrupting the class. And I could see that. Like, I could see that he was Kind of muted. When we'd had him tested for ADHD, we also had him tested for giftedness. And those results came back that he was highly gifted in language and, you know, his ability to articulate difficult concepts even in 3rd grade. And so we were dealing— now I think it's kind of, they call this 2E, like twice exceptional, like you have ADHD and you're gifted, or you're on the autism spectrum and you have something else. So But we didn't know any of that at the time. We just knew it was really hard. Homework was still painful, and medication just wasn't working for him. So yeah, it was a lot.

What was your relationship like between you and Enzo?

It was good. I mean, it was really close. We kind of have one of those relationships where I feel like even when he's in a different state, I kind of know how he's feeling. It's— and I hear this often from people that I work with, that There is something about this relationship with this child that is so deep and so connected. Had a really good relationship that way. However, I also realized later on that I placed a lot of my expectations on him, you know, that this is how we do it in this family. We all go to college, we all, you know, whatever it is. And I didn't realize that I was doing that. And I also didn't really realize how, like, I was overly compensating. And I think that probably sent a message to him of, well, something must be wrong with me. You know, I had to take these tests. They said I have this thing, and now I have to take a medication for it. And that, I would think, has to be very confusing when you're so young. I mean, he was only in 3rd grade. So we had a great relationship, but I think there was a lot underneath that was going on that I didn't know about also.

So when did things start to take a turn?

Things started to take a turn when he was about 13. 12, 13. I had gotten divorced from his dad. It was an amicable divorce, and, you know, his dad would still come over for dinner, and we actually went on vacation one time. But we thought, I thought, because it was amicable, you know, we weren't fighting, there was no custody, it was— I just figured, okay, the kids are going to be okay. So that was not a very effective way to handle that. But things really started to turn When I got remarried a couple years after the divorce, and the first huge kind of thing that I couldn't ignore was getting a phone call from the principal in 8th grade who said, oh yeah, Enzo just— we found out he has marijuana. And then he just really started associating with a different group of friends because once our— we lived in this teeny little neighborhood with like 10 boys all the same age. They all grew up as this pack of brothers that would just roam around the neighborhood together. And all of a sudden, those friends were not allowed to hang out with him anymore because of the marijuana thing. And he had started to hang out with some friends that people didn't really know. And so, you know, it's like, oh, he's kind of getting that bad kid reputation. And so I really saw what I considered to be the good neighborhood friends fall away. And he's spending more and more time with these friends that I don't know. Freshman year of high school went pretty well. Like, didn't have any big incidents or anything. Sophomore year, we were getting phone calls from the school, you know, so-and-so said Enzo stole his iPad, or there was things like that that were happening. And I was still in the mode, you know, when we started to realize, okay, our kids are going to parties, they're doing these things, we really said, okay, if the boys say they're spending the night here, we're all gonna text and make sure that that's really what's going on. Yeah, it was hurtful. It was probably more hurtful for me to watch him, you know, Outed and pushed away. And it just, you know, the kids that he ended up becoming friends with didn't have parents around, didn't have rules, didn't matter if they were going to school or not, had no curfews. And he was getting more angry. Like, I could just tell there was this sense of anger in him. And I kept trying to ask him what it was, and he couldn't really articulate it. And I didn't know what To what degree the ADHD was playing in. And then you have the friends. And his dad had to move to the Philippines, which he thought— we all thought it was going to be kind of a permanent move. So, you know, my parents get divorced, which in his mind, as a person with ADHD, they often have this black and white thinking. It's 0 or 100. It's yes or no. There is no gray zone. And to him, what the divorce meant was— I don't have a family anymore. Yeah, well, as things got worse and I knew that he was really using drugs a lot, running around with these kids who had zero anything, I was trying to convince his dad that things were not just— this was not just a phase. My husband was like, you just need to be more disciplinarian. You just need to make sure that, like, he needs to take the trash out every week. He needs to do his dishes. Like, use more discipline. And my ex was like, ah, it's a phase. You know, kids do this. Boys are boys. This is— so I'm kind of stuck in between these 2 things, and I'm working full-time, and I'm traveling constantly. So just trying to juggle everything, I was so exhausted trying to figure out how to navigate the relationships, how to navigate him. I think I was just— there was so much guilt. I spent so much time trying to figure out What did I do wrong? Like, where did I go wrong with this? Should I have made him stay on the ADHD medication? Should I, you know, like, was it that sleepover in first grade with that weird kid who I had a weird feeling about? Or I didn't know anything about addiction. We didn't have addiction in the family, so it wasn't like I was familiar with anything. I was just so lost and also just embarrassed and ashamed because it was like everybody else's kids seemed to be doing just fine. You know, my nephews were doing just fine. So So you're trying to kind of keep a lid on it, which gets harder and harder as they're doing crazier and crazier things and they're not showing up for family events. And, you know, there's just so much like anxiety building up in you that you feel like you're just going to explode. My kids were going to be spending the week with their dad. This is— I was not married. I was not remarried yet. And I, you know, the whole during the week I'm talking to my ex, how's Enzo doing? And he's like, well, he's not here. He's spending the night at so-and-so's house. I'm like, but it's a school night. Should he be really spending the night? So we're kind of having a hard time tracking him down. I'm in Dallas, you know, trying to focus on work. And I finally get home Friday night and I land and my phone is blowing up like voicemails and text messages. I'm like, what is going on? And come to find out that Enzo and a couple of his new friends were on a road trip in California. And he was— he had just turned 16 a couple months before, and he had a car, which is a whole nother story. And they decided to drive to California to buy a lot of marijuana. He was on the road with one of our neighbor's kids. So we ended up meeting up with the police at their house when I got home from the airport. This was back when Twitter was huge. This was 2013. And one of the boys on— the boy from down the street was Posting photos. Luckily, Enzo did not have anything on his person. One of the other guys was— I think he was 20 or 21, and he had a warrant out, so they took him to jail. And one of the other kids also didn't have anything on him, so they just kind of let him go. So I had to drive to Oregon to pick Enzo up at a homeless youth shelter, which is where they dropped him off. They were on a lot of drugs. They were not sleeping. And he actually smelled so bad that I I had to have him. I was like, "You've got to go in the back seat because I can't have you next to me." Smelled so bad. So I think that was the scariest part of all of it was like I got a glimpse of oh my gosh! This is where he's headed. You know, it really hit me at that point. The way he looked, the way he smelled. So you know, things were just unraveling really quickly. But after that, I said to my ex. We are out of our parenting skill set. Like, there's no possible way that with the skills that we have, we're going to parent him out of this. And, you know, I had had the police in my living room while he was on this road trip saying, your son is going to be dead or in jail if you don't do something soon. And so, you know, I said, we're going to have to do something drastic because he's going to be dead or in jail. There was like a lockdown psych facility in Oregon that I had looked at. Fortunately, my ex-husband was like, no, we are not doing that. We're not putting him in a psych ward. So we ended up hiring a consultant, an educational therapeutic consultant who knows all of the adolescent programs, the owners, the therapists, all that. And she recommended wilderness therapy because she was like, you've got to get this kid. You have to physically extract him. He is in too much trouble and he will be dead. That's what we did. We had 2 very large transporters show up at our house at 2:30 in the morning, and they kind of trained his dad and I on how to go down to his room and have a conversation with him and let him know that we were getting him out of the state and we were going to give him a break. Well, the scariest part was that he was not coming home at that point, so he would be gone for 3 or 4 days. And so I had no way of knowing that he was even going to be home that The night that we had chosen for them. And fortunately, he did come home because the next day his high school was reopening after a remodel, and he wanted to see the school. And so he did come home. He was fairly under the influence, so he was pretty, like, out of it. Yeah. And they said, you know, go in, here's what you tell him, that you love him, you're concerned for him and his safety. He's getting a break. He's going to be going to Utah. So we did that, and I was Bracing for this just horrible scene, right? Because he was getting more aggressive at that point. So we went upstairs, and I'm listening and listening, and I'm not hearing anything. And then I hear our— you know, we had told the guys, you can go out through the garage. So I hear the garage door open, and I see this car drive off. And I'm like, what just happened? I hadn't realized how much that You know, Enzo's— all of this had had on my younger son. And so when I told him, hey, just to let you know, you know, I woke him up that morning, Enzo's in a safe place. We got him some help. He's going to get some help. And I saw my other son come back to life. He had become so quiet, so, you know, kind of withdrawn, and he would just spend as much time as he could away from the house. Luckily, he had Really good group of friends at the YMCA. They played basketball. But it was like he just came back to life. And I think that's something that we don't realize as parents is how much, you know, it's kind of like you get used to the crazy, and you get used to so much trauma and so much chaos. And the other kids are also, if you have other kids in the house, they're going through that at the same time. Well, wilderness turned into having him go to residential treatment at a therapeutic boarding school, which was heartbreaking because, you know, in my uninformed mind, he was just gonna to be coming home and he would be fixed and everything would be fine. Our therapeutic consultant was like, nope. You know, he's— based on how he's been in Wilderness, which, like, C-minus student for sure, he definitely should not go home or he'll be right back into it. So we had him go to a residential treatment center, which is basically, you know, think of like sober living but for kids. So they're going to school, they're doing sports. And the program that he was at is Amazing. And they are all into, like, the X Games sports. So their whole concept was Tired by 10. Like, these kids are going to be so tired by 10 PM, they're going to want to drop into bed. So he went there. He learned that he could earn a home visit if he was a model student. And so he did that. He was a model student and earned a home visit and took that opportunity to run away when he was home. So he had friends pick him up. And took another road trip. This one was about 2 weeks, a little over 2 weeks. She said, Brenda, I just need to let you know that the chatter among the boys is that Enzo's gonna run away when he comes home. And so I talked to his therapist about it. We talked to Enzo about it. He's like, are you kidding me? How? I wouldn't be that stupid. Like, if I was gonna run away, I would just run from Utah, you know? So I was like, okay, well, thank you, but no, we've talked about it and he's not gonna do that. And he did. That was scary again. I actually lost my job during that time when he was gone because I was such a wreck. And, you know, my company was like, listen, this is not working out. You are not functioning. So he did end up coming home finally. His cousin convinced him. He did come home and he did try to start high school again. He was going to go into a program. Going back to school did not work because he got right back in the same crowd of kids who he had been the bad kids. So it was just a spiral again. He lost one of his friends to suicide at that same time, which was horrible. So, you know, he was just— I'm watching him, like, spiral down the drain, and I have no idea what to do, 'cause I'm like, well, we tried treatment, that didn't work. We've tried so many counselors and therapists, and that didn't work. He had been arrested for something, I can't remember what at the time. I just remember so many nights just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing and being like, What did I do wrong? Where did I go wrong? Why is this happening? How do I make this stop? You know, you're just asking yourself those million questions. You know, I now know a lot of tools like the CRAFT approach and all of that. I didn't know any of that at the time. I hadn't found any of that. And so I was just continuing to yell and scream. At one point, I would pay him $5 a day to go to school, which lasted like 3 days. You know, everything I did, I was just desperate, like, What do I do? And he ended up not being able to move with us. It was just before his 18th birthday. We were just bumping along. We sold our house and we were moving. And I had told him, you can move with us if you stop using, if you get a job, just even a part-time job, very minimal requirements. And he didn't do any of that. And so it was just horrible to know I'm basically kicking my 17-year-old out. I could, you know, I told his brother, you cannot tell him where we're moving. You can't give a— we were moving in the same city. Things went downhill really, really fast after that. He was living on his dad's boat for a while, which was even scarier to think about. A kid who's, you know, using drugs and then also living on a boat. And ended up getting a DUI, like, 3 days after his 18th birthday. You know, just one thing after another. He did go to a detox and a 30-day program, and he was really, at the time, addicted to Xanax. Super dangerous. Oh my God. So he was in a medical detox, and then a 30-day rehab. And then he actually asked if he could go back to the program he was at in Utah. They now had an 18, like, to 20-year-old program. So frustrating as a parent to watch it, 'cause you're like, we just spent all this time and money having you go through this program, and it looks like you didn't learn anything. But they do. After that, where I was like, you gotta come home. We can't afford to keep you in this program. It's so crazy expensive. Now you have your high school diploma. You can come back and kind of get back on your feet. And so he did come back to Seattle, and I think within a month, he was right back in it. Same people, same, you know, Xanax pills, just right back in it. And so I had an interventionist come and talk to him. I said, well, I don't want to do an intervention, but I just want you to see, like, what's the deal with him? She said, he's pre-contemplative. He doesn't think he has a problem. He's not ready to make any kind of change. There's no point in me you know, doing anything right now. And so she gave me some things to think about, you know, of how I was interacting with him. And then she had mentors that she had on her staff. And so he would meet once a week with this guy who was in recovery. And at least it was probably more helpful for me than it was for Enzo, because at least I knew for 1 hour a week he was spending time with somebody who was a positive influence. And he would show up?

He showed up to the mentor?

Sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes he would because I think the guy would give him a cigarette and he would buy him a cup of coffee. And at this point, Enzo didn't have any money. He was always hungry. And so I think there was some added incentive for him to show up to those. So, you know, I didn't know what direction things were gonna go, but I knew that probably trying to get him to go to treatment again wasn't gonna be effective at all. Then He turned 19, and at that point, I was seeing a therapist who knew about Kraft, and she helped me come up with a plan. And she said, I want you to reach out to him every once in a while and see if he'll just meet you for lunch or breakfast or whatever, and do not say anything about his substance use or his lifestyle. I was like, well, then what are we going to talk about? Because—

Yeah. Build a bridge back. Just put, put, lay down some bricks.

Yes.

Yeah.

And it was such a foreign concept because I had been told you can't do that because you're enabling him if you're nice to him.

You guys, if you're listening to this, that's old message. Let's get rid of that.

I know. And so I remember calling her a couple of times and I was like, if I go have lunch with him and I bring him some socks, is that enabling? Like, I was so confused. But, you know, you get these conflicting messages.

Me too. Conflicting messages. And in fact, a lot of people in recovery will even give you that advice. They'll say—

Yeah. So I just said, if you are not under the influence, let's meet up and have a meal. And I only said that— I wasn't trying to control him, but I couldn't handle the emotional impact of being with him when he was high because he was kind of like drooly and, you know, like that zanned-out kind of like— and it just broke my heart. And so I just couldn't see it. I wasn't trying to like manipulate him into Not using, but I was like, if you are not under the influence. And so he would. Every once in a while we would have, you know, this was probably over the course of like 6 months that we met up a handful of times. And every once in a while, yeah, I'm like, are you living on the boat right now? Yeah, I'm kind of living on the boat. And I say, okay, let's go to Safeway and we'll get you some, you know, food. And that just like started to build that connection back with us. And it was really special. And we never talked about his substance use. And it was the first time I really could separate the addiction from my son. I was like, oh, we can sit—

You're not tangling up with the addiction and arguing with the— I know this sounds crazy, but sometimes I describe it like, it's like they're possessed, and it's like the old movie The Exorcist, and it's like how the demon's trying to like make you argue with it. It's like, no, we want to talk to the person in there.

Yes.

It's like that. I know that sounds crazy.

It is.

It's visual, but that's what it's like.

It's completely that. And because then I could see he's still talking about things that are going on in the world, and he's still following some sports. And, like, it's like—

He's in there. He's in there.

He's in there. And it was so nice to see that. I mean, he looked horrible and skinny and just, you know, you just want to, like, wrap your arms around him and never let him go. And, you know, I would drop him back off at the bus stop, and he would always kind of look at— in the console of my car, I would have some quarters or pennies or whatever, and he would kind of look and be like, Like, can I have those? I'd be like, sure, you can have those. It was never more than, like, 75 cents. And I was like, I can't believe my son is basically panhandling from his mom. It was just the most heartbreaking thing. And to try to explain that to anyone, you know, I'd come home and I would just be a mess. And my husband would kind of look at me like, well, you should be happy. You saw Enzo today. And I'm like, no, you have no idea how— like, it literally guts, my heart to drop him. It was so horrible. And then we kind of lost touch for a couple of months. He never responded to my texts, to my invitations. And that's when I got the phone call on a Friday night from a random girl, called my phone and said, Enzo's in the hospital. He overdosed. I think you should go.

It's like the phone call you have nightmares about, and here it is.

Absolutely. And so we did. We went to the hospital. We were like an hour away. So that hour drive was Like, so painful. It was just like every hour I was just, you know, every minute I'm replaying parts of his life and my life. And had left against medical advice. And then on the call that we got on that Friday, he was in a coma. He was on life support. They had a ventilator in. And, you know, he had been found in the backseat of a car, foaming at the mouth, no pulse. And they were just like— he also had a raging case of pneumonia. They're like, if this doesn't kill him, the pneumonia might kill him. And so he was on life support for 3 days. He had had a heart attack. He'd had a stroke. You know, it was like the doctors just kind of said, you need to get your family here. Like, everybody needs to get here. And his brother had just flown down that day from Seattle to San Diego to go on college tour trips with his dad. He and his dad hopped back on a plane, flew back ...to Seattle. And, you know, you just sit and wait. Like, there's nothing you can do. You just sit and wait, and you listen to the machines, and you listen to the whooshing of the ventilator. And families coming by. And, you know, he had one good friend left, and that good friend came. We kept him under a fake name in the hospital because we didn't want his homies coming and picking him up like they had done on Wednesday. And, you know, he is an absolute medical miracle. He came out of that.

Yeah.

He had a long rehabilitation from the stroke in particular. So we were on the 5th floor stroke unit. So everybody there is like 90 years old. And the nurses would come up to me and they're like, oh honey, are you lost? And I'm like, nope, I'm here with my 19-year-old who just had a stroke. And he had to relearn how to brush his teeth and tell time and read and walk. Watching a 19-year-old have to relearn how to walk on a walker with the little tennis balls on the bottom bottom of the walker. You know, again, you're just like, where are the cameras? This can't possibly be my life that this is happening. So yeah, he was in 2 different hospitals for a month while he relearned how to do everything and had to get his strength back. Because when he was in the coma, you know, he atrophied. So his hands were, like, really up like this. So they had to do a lot of work. And he was in a lot of pain from his legs. And he kept— for a while there, he was just harassing the nurses. But I also I didn't know a lot of what was going on in his life at that time. And he was kind of having to make a decision between 2 groups of, I put in air quotes, friends. They weren't really a gang, but, like, this group was against this group. And Enzo was at a point, like, the day he had the second overdose, he was gonna have to tell them which side he was going on. And so he was trying to deal with all of the effects of the overdose, which included him Having no short-term memory. So he would, after he came out of the coma, he would wake up and he would look around and he would look at me. He knew who I was. And he would say, where am I? It looks like a hospital. And I would say, it is a hospital. You had an overdose. He was like, why did, why did I do that? That's a really good question, son. And then he would fall asleep and he would wake up 15 minutes later and he would look around and he would look at me and he would say, where am I? Why am I in a hospital? And that went on for 2 weeks because he had no idea what had happened. And one of the nurses— and I think we're going to give you some photos— one of the nurses told me, you need to take pictures and video of this because he's not going to remember any of it. And I was like, how could you not remember this? Like, this is— She said, he's not going to remember. You need to take pictures. And so we did. We took a lot of pictures and video, and I'm so glad that we did because he really does not remember. That time. And it was very impactful for us, obviously. I think also for the team at the hospital to see somebody who they did not think was gonna live, certainly would not ever come back with, like, mental capacity. He's well known and remembered. His dad and I were talking with a doctor, and he shows up at the door of this room that we were in. Like, he can barely stand, you know? And he's like, pencil, Skinny, like, and he's like, I'm out of here. Because I think he still wasn't, you know, clearly he wasn't mentally okay, but he was gonna leave. And it was probably the hardest hour of my life talking, trying to talk him out of leaving because he was 19 and he could. I'm so out of my depth, like, I don't even know what to do or to say. And I thought about his friend who had died by suicide. And I said, Enzo, you have a choice right now. You are literally at a crossroads right now. If you walk out of this hospital, I will never see you again because you will die. And I said, think about Ryan. Ryan does not have a choice anymore. He made a choice that he and his family will never, ever be able to change. You have a chance right now to do this. And if you're not going to do it for you and you're not going to do it for me and you're not going to do it for your dad, do it for Ryan. And he just, you know, he was so out of it, but he just stood there, and he just looked at me. It was almost like he was looking through me. It was the weirdest look on his face for, like, 5 minutes straight, just— and I am just sot, like, ugly cry snot. And I was just like— because I just knew if he left, I would never see him again. And he just looked at me like that, and then he kind of leaned back on the hospital bed, and he literally tipped over, like, Like tipped over on his side, backpack was still on his back, and he fell asleep. It was surreal. We were just like, oh my gosh, what just happened? And I do think that he— that's when he really realized, okay, this is gonna take me down. I'm not gonna beat fentanyl. You know, it's gonna take me down. So yeah, I agree. I think you're right that it was that rehabilitation process that he does have memories of that he realized, I can't tell time. I can't write. I don't know how to brush my teeth. But, you know, they want him out of the hospital as soon as they can. And so we decided he would come back to our house, and he did. And he was supposed to be going to outpatient physical therapy and all this, and he wasn't going. And he was seeing a girl that he had been seeing before, and I knew they were smoking weed. And I'm like, oh, I can— like, this is not going in the positive direction. And his dad ended up— his dad lived in San Diego, and his dad ended up with an empty room, which is a whole other story. whole nother miracle story. And so we said, let's get you to San Diego. Let's get you out of Seattle. And that was huge. And I don't know why it took me so long to figure that out, but like getting him away from all of the people, all of the triggers, all of the junk that was around him here. So he moved there, did a court-ordered— or PHP actually first, because he had had another DUI that he was having to deal with in court. And he literally just like one minute at a time started putting his life back together and, you know, did the PHP, started going. He did go to like 90 days of meetings, AA meetings. He didn't end up— he's not an AA guy, but he ended up going and getting some value out of that at the time. Got a part-time job, you know, retail job. Started with one community college class. Just very, very, like, painfully small steps at a time. And started doing that. I mean, it was just incredible to see. Like, when he said he got a job at Marshalls, I was— Well, it was a little hard 'cause I was in Seattle and he was in San Diego. And so I wasn't seeing him day to day like his dad was. But he seemed to be really kind of cognitively coming back. I don't really know how to explain it. For a while, like, at the hospital and afterward— well, in the hospital especially, like, his eyes would kind of just roll up in his head. And, you know, there— it wasn't like— I didn't feel like we were tracking, like, one-to-one. And so it felt like his cognitive speed was coming back. His physical health health was coming back. He didn't seem as angry as he had before. I think his— he and his dad worked out some stuff that they had to work on. I just kept telling him how incredibly amazed I was at his ability to do the things that he was doing, because I truly was. I was like, you know, I saw you laying in that hospital bed, and now I see you, like, being on time to work and being early for work and picking up shifts other people aren't willing to pick up and, you know, just going the extra mile. And yeah, it's like the worst nightmare turns into the thing that really does help start putting things back together. Well, now it's super fun because we've gotten through so much, you know, stuff. And I work in the field working with parents. He works in this field working with kids. And so, well, I, you know, I had been in advertising and marketing, like I said, and And after he got out of the hospital, so this was 2017, I went back to my job and I had one account that required me to be in Hawaii every 5 weeks, which was not terrible. And my other account was a winery. And so I had this kind of cushy job where, you know, I was in my 25th year of my career. So I knew what I was doing. I had a great team. I had these great accounts. And I just couldn't reconcile what I was doing, you know, all day, knowing what I had just been through. Knowing that there were so many other families who were going through what I was going through, and I just after two it took about two years after I went back to work, and I was like, "I can't do this anymore." I you know I'm selling plane tickets and shampoo and shoes. So luckily, my husband was super supportive, and I said, "I want to go help other families that are going through this because I got told all the wrong things." Because by then I had found drugfree.org, you know the partnership to end addiction. I had become a coach. I'd gotten some. You know, training, and I was like mind blown. You know the little emoji with the mind blown on? I was like, how come I never knew this? Why didn't I know this information when we were in it? And so I just started with my podcast Hope Stream, and I was like, you know, I'm not therapist. I don't know anything about this. But what I can do is I can bring people that we met along the way, all the therapists and the treatment programs and the amazing resources, and at least I could just share those with people. Yeah, I just took all my business skills that I had learned in my career. And kind of put them toward this and found other moms in particular who were, you know, they were listening to the podcast and they were emailing me and they're like, hey, like, can we hang out? Like, where are you? And so started an online community. And that was during COVID when everything was going haywire. And man, the kids really struggled during COVID You know, treatment programs weren't open and it was, it was really bad. You know, now I know how to communicate. Now I know how to really be empathetic with somebody. Like, our kids are doing this for a reason. They're not just randomly, haphazardly like, hey, I think I'm just gonna go take some fentanyl today 'cause I got nothing else to do. Like, there's so much behind that. So incredibly undervalued. You know, if somebody had told me, oh, take a communication course, I'd have been like, I know how to communicate. Like, I'm in the communication industry. But I had no idea. I had no idea. And I think until you can learn about addiction in particular and learn about what is going on in the brain, especially with high-potency THC and fentanyl, these, you know, getting the hooks in the brain, like these kids at some point, they don't have a choice. They are not using to get high. They are just using to be able to function and get through a day. And I never understood that. I never knew that. I just thought this kid is willful and defiant and angry. And oppositional, and he's just finding the thing that's gonna hurt me the most. And that, you know, that was kind of my mindset. I was like, that's the kid I got. And if I had known all of these tools, I would've been curious about it and thought, huh, I wonder why he's doing this. You know, I wonder what's underneath the surface that I'm not seeing. I would say, no, there is a reason. This is not just random. You know, if your kid's really in it, if they're using substances, no matter what substance it Even if it's gaming, you know, maybe they're super addicted to gaming or something like that, just know there's a reason. Like, it does make sense to them and it's their solution. It's not the problem. And parents, we always come at it as, this is the problem and all of that. We're trying to take that away and all we're doing is taking away the one thing that is working for them. And so it's no wonder they're mad at us. It's no wonder they're angry and oppositional and defiant. So I would just say get educated, get some support, get a counselor, get a coach, get whatever who's been through it so that you— I think about our journey lasted about 6 years, and I don't know that maybe things would have been a lot different if I had known some of these tools, but I think it would have sped things up. I think I would've gotten to understanding sooner. I think I would've gotten to a better relationship with him sooner. So if you're looking for a way to sort of shorten this hell that you're in, I would say get some support and get educated and learn these tools because they work and they're not that hard. Maybe we need to actually position, like, CRAFT and all these tools as more, like, tactical, strategic tools to use because I think it can be overly emotional. And especially as parents, we get so emotionally caught up in all of this. Whereas if you really look at, you know, if you were going to go into a negotiation, right?